a5c7b9f00b Barry Seal was just an ordinary pilot who worked for TWA before he was recruited by the CIA in 1978. His work in South America eventually caught the eye of the Medellín Cartel, associated with Pablo Escobar, who needed a man with his skill set. Barry became a drug trafficker, gun smuggler and money launderer. Soon acquiring the title, &#39;The gringo that always delivers&#39;. In 1978, the skilled and ambitious TWA pilot Barry Seal smuggles Cuban cigars to increase his income. Out of the blue, he is contacted by the CIA agent Monty Schafer, who asks him to work for the CIA photographing facilities over Central America using a state-of-art small plane. Soon Barry contacts General Noriegaa courier for the CIA and is contacted by the Medellin Cartel that wants him to transport drugs to the USA. Then Schafer asks Barry to carry weapons for the Contras in Nicaragua. Barry invites pilots that are his friends and plots routes to smuggle drugs for the cartel. The CIA closes eyes to the scheme and Barry becomes richer and richer. He uses the Arkansas town Mena to launder his money. But the DEA and the FBI are tracking him down. When the CIA shuts down the scheme, Barry is left alone and arrested by the agencies. What will happen to his family and him? Based on a story that would be completely unbelievable if it wasn&#39;t true, this crime-comedy yarn follows commercial pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise)he undertakes work for the CIA, the Medellin Cartel, and the White House. Often all at once. Not taking itself too seriously—murder, drug smuggling and civil wars all casually occurring with little on screen consequence—this flick is operating in strange moral territory where our protagonist is presenteda kinda-hero living the American dream. It coasts by largely on charm and light-hearted hijinks, with director Doug Liman delivering a spate of stylish filmmaking flourishes to create an exuberant atmosphere of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll that glosses over the moral murkiness. It helps that Cruise is in top gear; his Barry is excitable but level-headed, devious but likable, jokey but intelligent. It&#39;s a nice return to form after the excruciatingly bad The Mummy earlier this year. Yet overall the film doesn&#39;t quite elevate from good to great. From a comedy perspective it&#39;s amusing but lacking laugh-out-loud moments,a thriller it&#39;s occasionally tense without being nail-biting, anda biopic it&#39;s interesting yet never enthralling. A solid truth-is-stranger-than-fiction tale despite failing to truly excel, American Made is a fun and breezy viewing best served by lowered expectations. Doug Liman&#39;s entertaining &quot;American Made&quot; tells the somewhat true story of Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot, who, during the 1980&#39;s, was &#39;coerced&#39; into flying spy missions for the CIA before becoming a drug smuggler for a Colombian drug cartel. Then, to avoid prison, he becomes an informant for the DEA, and winds up slipping further and further into a complex web of nefarious enterprises that makes it virtually impossible for him to get out of. <br/><br/>Playing Seal with a flippant sarcasm, Tom Cruise displays the multi-leveled range of a superior character actor, but what really makes this film work is Liman&#39;s tightrope-balancing act between outrageous humor and the serious, even dangerous, reality of Seal&#39;s situation. In fact, the film brings to mind the best of Martin Scorsese&#39;s work, e.g., &quot;Goodfellas&quot;, or, more precisely, Scorsese&#39;s less accomplished &quot;Wolf of Wall Street&quot;. Particularly notable is the film&#39;s digital photography that employs an exaggerated sun-drenched color saturation to the point of comic-book surrealism. <br/><br/>Although taking liberty with the facts (Seal did not crash-land into a suburban neighborhood), this is a cinematic ride that ranks with the best action thrillers of recent years. And how it eventually leads into the Iran-Contra criminal escapades of the Reagan Administration in 1986 should provide an eye-opening history lesson to viewers who may not know much about that shady era in American history. (Interesting trivia: Cruise actually does his own flying in the film.) A first-rate entertainment, and Liman&#39;s career best. Cruise is on top form in a based-on-fact thriller that overcomes its familiar trappings with audacious details and flat-out pacing.
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